


Caramel Rolls

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Food, Het, Love, Romance, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 18:39:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5836456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just classify it as "sweetness and light" and wonder what I was on that particular day. Pre-Biogenesis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caramel Rolls

I lie down on the couch, tilt my head back, and sniff the air, waiting for it all to be done. Mom’s famous Sunday morning caramel rolls are reheating in the oven, even though it’s a Saturday afternoon and no company– well, what I would define as company, anyway– is coming over. But I was always a secret rebel. I remember how many times Billy got blamed for taking the first roll without permission, while I had gulped it down and burnt my tongue so often I couldn’t speak to clear his name, if I had wanted to clear his name. If being the key word, too.

It’s amazing how comfortable it is to be stretched out like this, in jeans I think are vintage 1983 torn-knee stonewash straight out of my college days. I’m also wearing a huge, “Property of XXL Sportsclub” that Tara– or was it Charlie’s latest girlfriend, what’s her name, the one with the lips– got me for my birthday. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that my glasses are slipping off the tip of my nose, trying to follow Annie Dillard (I’ve been waiting for months to have enough time to re-read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and all of the sudden, when I have the time, I don’t feel like reading) while the air gets sticky sweet with caramel rolls baking.

I like this very much. Every Saturday afternoon could be like this, barefoot, lazy, and luxuriant, with the promise of free Showtime to come tonight. I would be warmly, divinely happy. I think I could add ten years onto my life if I had Saturday afternoons like this all the time. I could take long baths, read books, finally watch a movie that came out post-1993, go to the park, dance around in my living room naked– why not?

Maybe I could even convince that idiot lug of a partner of mine to give me a foot massage. I could do it today, in exchange for caramel rolls. The inner arch of my foot twitches at the thought of getting a good solid rub. Those heels end up hurting like hell after sixty hours a week of crimefighting in them. And it turns out that I’m too damn vain to take them off. A little vanity now and then is cherished by all of us, especially once we get old and notice that we aren’t the fresh- faced kids we once were.

The scent of caramel rolls is distracting me. Hell, they could distract me from a naked Joseph Fiennes, I think. Or maybe I could combine naked Joseph Fiennes and Mom’s caramel rolls, ending up with some biological equivalent of Heaven. Or I’d end up with some wickedly orgasmic sex while enjoying a tasty dessert. Either way, I’d win.

God help me, I’m so relaxed (except for worrying that maybe those damn rolls are done already) I feel like bursting into song. And I don’t burst into song, not like the woman in those hair-dye commercials. My ass is too big, and I don’t feel like a natural woman. I feel like the happy, sleepy, easy, peaceful feeling woman, maybe. But the oven is beeping and so I must put aside the fixed and trudge across the living room– if I weren’t having company, hooboy it would be naptime– to the oven, with a short detour to pick up some hot pads to make sure I don’t burn myself.

Yeah, I know, exciting stuff, but who really gives a damn if my Saturday afternoons are exciting? My mom might prefer I was out with some cute investment banker named Jim who she told me makes 80K a year and has a nice house out in Virginia, but, well, she knows what I’m doing. She knows I dress down, make sweets, and hang out with only one man. I don’t know how she knows; I didn’t exactly tell her. But that’s the mom-gift, I suppose: man-radar. Or commitment radar.

I still don’t know what to tell her. It was some kind of freak occurrence that finally set it all off, but in my life, freak occurrences are in abundance. But sitting in that bank, watching that woman die and realizing it could have been me, or it could have been Mulder while having the strangest chill of deja vu– I realized that life is too short. Life has always been too short, but this time I wasn’t dying, or I wasn’t following the quest– I was just a woman with a person she loved too much to classify him as a partner, or even a friend.

And yes, the first time was earth shattering, soul-searching, ohmigod, it has been too long, sex. After six years, it had damn well better be, I would say.

But now, it’s not an issue of high opera anymore. He comes to my apartment. I go to his. He cooks me spaghetti. Or sometimes macaroni and cheese. I bring over videos. He shows me ten years of trinkets from the Gunmen. We fight over things, like he hasn’t shown me enough regard, or that I’m being a petty bitch. We go home angry. We go home happy. We have pretty good sex most of the time. If I sound like I’m describing that most common and elusive of experiences, a happy, comfortable relationship– well?

Hell, maybe I am, except that most of those don’t include the fun of being digested in North Carolina by a giant mushroom that makes you hallucinate. Most happy relationships don’t know the joy of having your heart ripped out by some psychopath’s vision in your favorite white blouse. But who knows? Normality is an overrated illusion, anyway. Hell, these caramel rolls could be an illusion, and I could still be in the belly of that fungus thing.

The door opens. Or appears to, anyway. “You’re trying to seduce me into your apartment. Have you turned June Cleaver because you’re afraid that Julie the Accountant will steal me away?” Mulder asks.

I burst into, well, giggles. Damn Saturday afternoons. They’re going to ruin my somber reputation. “That’s a nice hello,” I squeak out. “What the hell do you have there?”

“They were a birthday present. Hours and hours of Star Trek: The Animated Series,” Mulder replies deadpan. “Can I have some? Whatever it is?”

This sends me further into the fit of giggles. God damn it all the way to hell. I know Langly got him those in exchange for some FBI password that really shouldn’t be in the hands of the Three Stooges. But who the hell cares at this point? I’m starving, and I think that I have more than enough right to get something to eat. And a glass of milk. That’s very important. Milk does a body good, unless you’re lactose intolerant.

“Depends on what you want some of,” I reply, reclaiming my sober demeanor. “You might want some of me, or some of the caramel rolls. Either way, you’re putting out.”

“Put out– what exactly?” he asks, matching my deadpan perfectly.

“Well, these are my mom’s famous, sticky, gooey, last-one-to-the-pan don’t get any, caramel rolls,” I say, lifting one out of the pan, aware that it’s burning my hand, and taking a big, childish bite. “My feet hurt, Mulder.”

He’s not as stupid as he sometimes tries to be. He makes the connection very quickly. “So what happens when your feet don’t hurt?”

“Good things. And I’d be eternally grateful,” I reply with a coy little smile. My God, when did I turn into such a wheeling-dealing trickster female?

“To hell with grateful. How about giving me some lovin’ with something from the oven?” Mulder asks, trying to sound suave. The key word would be trying.

He looks about seven as he follows me and the tray towards the living room, where I plop on the couch and laugh. Happiness is no more or no less possible than sorrow, after all. I could almost say it’s easy like Sunday morning.

Except I don’t think that my definition of easy includes Mulder burning his tongue on a roll and dropping it on my newly cleaned couch, and then making us watch four hours of Star Trek: The Animated Series. It might, however, fit under my definition of happy anyway.

THE END


End file.
